The McLaren might be a nice colour, but the Honda in the back was still giving troubles over the testing. They were on their 3rd engine by the 2nd day of testing while the Mercedes just kept pounding around the circuit.

I was listening to John Watson last night during FP 2 via the official F1 broadcast. He was discussing the difference in aero between LMP1 and F1. LMP1 cars have no problems when following other cars as their aero is not disrupted when in close quarters with other cars. F1 cars rely too heavily on the front wing for their aero and, as front wing aero is trashed when following another car, there is an issue with close quarter racing. F1 should focus on under body aero with just a basic wing element at the front if there is to be any hope of improving wheel to wheel racing. One can look at the front wing spec of an Indy car configured for the Indianapolos 500 as a possible example.

If the F1 "Drivers Championship" means anything, actually make it about the drivers. Put the entire field out there in a Lotus 49 and let the best driver win.

I use the Lotus 49 not only because it's friggin' beautiful but because a former F1 driver, Martin Brundle, tested it as part of a recap of F1 through the decades and said that the engine was a decade ahead of the chassis, suspension, and tyres. IOW, it was all about the driver.

I really liked how Bottas improved through the weekend and was catching Hamilton on genuine pace at points in the race. There are a lot of people who didn't rate him as Rosberg's replacement but he seems to have slotted in perfectly.

I also like the way we appear to have 2 constructors capable of winning for now, will have to see how things go during the season. Kimi needs to sort things out otherwise we could have Vettel winning the drivers championship and Mercedes winning the Constructors.

What a snoozer. As everyone has predicted on track battles and overtaking are pretty much non-existent. I guess it's good that 2 teams can win now instead of 1, but it's sad that 99% of the "race" doesn't matter. All that matters is qualifying, the start, and the single pitstop. It's not like F1 was great the last few years either, but when you already have a **** sandwich, pissing on it isn't going to improve it.

I am more watching F1 out of habit at this point than because it's actually any good, or for those rare good races (almost only happens if it rains now)

Australia is always a low number of overtakes. We need to wait until we get some better tracks before declaring the new rules have broken overtaking.

Overtaking was already broken, or they wouldn't have had to introduce the DRS gimmick. When overtaking is impossible even WITH that gimmick, something is really really wrong. There doesn't even need to be a large number of overtakes, just the POSSIBILITY of them happening. That early phase of the race would have been really tense if anyone thought there was actually a chance of Vettel passing Hamilton, but instead we were all just waiting for the pitstop. When Verstappen was catching Raikkonen that should have been interesting, but we knew even if he caught up there was zero chance of overtaking.

I'll give it some more races since I realize Melbourne isn't the best track for overtaking. I am just annoyed that instead of fixing the fundamental problem (overly complicated/sensitive front wings and aero) they introduce endless gimmicks and now have possibly managed to make the problem even worse.

MotoGP by comparison the first race had multiple leaders from multiple teams, at one point there were 5 different teams in the top 6, etc. They can follow literally inches behind the bike in front. I know F1 can never be like that, but decades ago it at least fell into a great middle-ground where overtaking was difficult but POSSIBLE.

I agree with the premise in that article, we needed tyres that were robust enough that pushing hard didn't kill them after a lap. However in delivering that we also got tyres that are very durable and have reduced the races to a single stop. The multiple stops and different tyre strategies gave cars with large speed differentials and fun racing last year.

I am glad that Bernie has gone and we now have Ross Brawn in charge of the racing side of things. Bernie wasn't technical so would say silly things like "We need the cars louder". If you look at any pre-race footage where TV pundits are trying to talk to camera in the pitlane while the teams are firing up engines, it is plenty loud enough! What we actually need is more of a screaming howl which comes from high rpms rather than the current low growl. We don't get this howl because the instantaneous fuel flow limit is so low that the teams have to keep the revs low, they change before 12k when the limit is 15k, as the higher revs use more fuel.

Ross already said in interviews before the start of the season that he isn't going to be rushed in to knee jerk reactions. He is a very clever cookie, lets give him some time to sort things out. We may have to live with not too many overtakes this season, but I'd rather do that and get a proper solution for next season than rush to knee jerk reactions and end up with things like that stupid qualifying format we had at the start of last year!

Unlikely with the way the Red Bull's are running this year, unless they take a big step with aero at some point.

The Red Bull's had been expected to be fast with the change in aero as historically they've done well at change of aero regs. They seem to have missed something or the banning of the trick suspensions has hit them harder than the rest with the amount of rake that they usually run. I know Christian Horner kind of denied it in an interview, but as a team boss he isn't going to give away info to his competition.